HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Lio

10,451 karma · joined December 21, 2011

submissionscomments
Lio··on Boards of Casio
Oh! No I wasn't, thank you.
Lio··on Boards of Casio
The CZ synths were really underrated, I think because the presets IMHO are a bit rubbish.

I still love them though. Phase distortion can make some really great noises with a bit of coaxing.

I have the bigger CZ-5000 with the built in sequencer I bought used in the 90s and still play. I think it was probably used most famously by Drexciya but the Kevin Saunderson "Reece Bass" sound was everywhere in early jungle.

I like this CZP-1 soft synth. It's pretty nice once you flip the flow from left to right to top to bottom.

Lio··on The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy
I was going to make a joke about how it depends on how fast you eat it but you're absolutely right.

Tobacco is incredibly damaging but because it doesn't kill you right away we tolerate it.

There's probably a rather grim metric that defines time to death ratio for addictive substances somewhere in a government report.

Lio··on What About Rails?
I would have been more interested if he'd spoken about improvements actually in the Ruby world.

There fast JITS like YJIT, ZJIT, JRuby and TruffleRuby.

We also have static typing with RBS and an AOT compiler in Spinel and we have embeddable Crystal.

The speed of TruflleRuby or Spinal with RBS isn't that far behind Go.

And here's a Ruby advantage for you, Ruby even with static typing needs fewer tokens from your context window to represent the same solution as verbose Go.

DHH's own pitch for HotWire was that it allowed a native like experience without having to bow to Apple app store review process. Where's that gone?

There's lots of positive things that DHH could have spoken of but didn't.

Lio··on What About Rails?
DHH's keynote was like listening to David Brent give a motivational speech.

"Some of you will loose your jobs. I know, I know. Gutting. Gutting. On a more positive note, I'm getting a promotion. So every cloud. Oh, you're still think about the bad stuff aren't you?"

You have to laugh about it because he's kind of making himself irrelevant too. We listened to him because of Rails not Hey or Basecamp. They were just application of Rails as a technology.

If he no longer has a vision for Rails' niche, what do we need him for? What's his pitch?

He might as well just be a Danish Barry Gibb impersonator that can't sing but instead drones on and on about politics. :P

Lio··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
Well, it's not the distant future we're talking here. This is happening right now.

On street charging is being installed in most countries as we speak.

Lio··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
I don't get why it matters that it's made in China but if you don't like that you could buy a European made Dacia Spring for around US$15,000 on the road.

1 in 3 new cars sold in the UK is electric and that number is growing. Spurred by the growing price of fossil fuels I think it's a safe bet it will be higher next year too.

Lio··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
That sounds like a solvable problem given a short amount of time.

Two things will likely solve it:

1. There's isn't a fixed number of chargers in the world. Eventually the majority of commercial car parking space will have a charging point because they're getting cheaper and it's an easy value add.

2. Charging is getting ever faster and range is growing. 800v platforms are probably the next obvious step but after that something else will come along.

Imagine an EV with 1000 mile range that charges in 5 minutes and costs less than half what the average ICE car does now. It's far fetched but it's not so far fetched.

There are no such improvements on the way for ICE technology.

Electrification is happening right now in the rest of the world and it can't be stopped because it's better technology.

Lio··on Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]
To clarify, my point isn't that the market for software won't expand due to the greater productivity unlocked by AI.

It's that the benefits of that productivity won't go to the kinds of people that previously wanted to stay in engineering their whole career.

I'm not sure the Jevons Paradox applies because you're not just making engineering more efficient you're replacing it altogether with something much more commoditised.

People will gain from this but it won't be the same people.

Lio··on Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]
Yes, I watched it. I'm not saying he got rid of engineers so much as just not hiring new ones.

If he's hiring new people they won't be engineers or the people that used to do engineering.

They'll be people that are better suited to writing English than code.

Lio··on Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]
I hate native apps. There are use cases better suited to native apps but often it's just not what I want.

You have little to no control over privacy, tracking or advertising compared to the web. That's left to the original developer and there's nothing you can do about it.

You can't do things like disable autoplaying videos. Often you can't even copy text without taking a screen shot. On a phone it's also much easier to zoom random parts of the screen in a browser compared to a native app.

There are legitimate reasons to prefer the web to native apps.

Lio··on Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]
It looks like he spent about 4 minutes out of the 1:03 making that point.

I can't but help think that he would have spent longer on it if that's what he really thought.

I don't think he believes in Rails any more.

It's clear that he was more excited about thing that are not ruby or rails and now considers rust better suited to the output of AI.

To be honest, I could see rust taking over from typescript/javascript as an output language for the web too. If no one needs to read source code any more why not use rust for everything?

Lio··on Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote [video]
I get why DHH would be really happy about getting rid of engineers. It's less clear how this isn't a little bit gloomy for the engineers.

Is the idea that they'll switch to doing "product owner" roles overseeing agents? I don't see that employing the same number of people or paying as well as engineering used to.

To be honest I expect that that role to suit different people to those that used to be engineers.

If this feels gloomy to some people, it's because it is.

Lio··on Meta takes down a critical video about meta AI Glasses after filming at Meta
If the whole publishing industry can't collect copyright violation fines from Meta what makes you think you can?
Lio··on Meta takes down a critical video about meta AI Glasses after filming at Meta
Not just their grandparents, the chances are that Meta is processing those videos you take of your kids too even when they say they aren't.

They've played fast and loose with copyrighted material for years, as shown in court records.

They company was founded on the principle of breaking privacy law, as highlighted in Zuckerberg's famous Dumb Fucks conversation.

Meta does what Meta can get away with and you really can't do anything about it without exceptionally deep pockets.

The publishing industry has more money than you do and they failed too.

Lio··on OpenAI breaches Medicare, Albanese reveals
Is there any financial motivation for OpenAI to stop doing this other than reputational damage? In some ways, it may actually be good for their reputation.

If an individual gets in to a poorly protected system they're still criminally responsible for the damage or disruption caused.

You can't use the excuse of "well they used 'password' as their password[1], they were asking for it".

Until the management of OpenAI is held to the same standard this is only going to get worse.

1. That's not to excuse poor system management. If you leave data exposed then you should be held responsible for that separately.

Lio··on What California is learning from solar panels built over irrigation canals
How much cable are we talking about here and can you go into more detail about where your house is located...?

Joking aside, I'm not sure that metal thefts can totally be blamed on addiction.

I used to work for a large British Telecoms company, that shall remain nameless. They regularly suffered from certain mobile sections of the community stealing metal.

They would do things like hack phone cables from telephone polls, attach them to an SUV and attempt to rip them out of the ground, with varying levels of success.

A week later the same people would break into a works yard in another part of the country after reels of fresh cable. The empty reel would usually be found in a field somewhere after they'd used petrol to burn the casing off.

I don't think the people involved were doing it for want of housing, healthcare or addiction treatment, as we have all of that in the UK. They just saw it as a source of money.

Once the law changed to make it a crime to buy scrap metal without a paper trail that cut that down massively.

Lio··on People hooked on vapes try a new way to quit: cigarettes
It's about 30 years ago that I quit smoking but it was a real bugger at the time.

Here's what helped me the most; every time you try to quit it gets a bit easier next time.

So if you try and fail, try again. Then keep trying after that.

So many people try to quit and get disheartened when they're pulled back.

Instead just think of it as another step along the path. You are training yourself to tolerate the itch and to do without nicotine.

Lio··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
A one time fee to use something you’ve already payed for?

They’ve really MBA’d the crap out of that brand and it serves them right now it’s going down the tube.

Lio··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Yes it is for me. Google Maps has much better and more up to date information.

A number of times I’ve been set to the wrong place by Apple Maps.

If you’re going to be served ads either way you might as well pick the more reliable tool.

For maps Apple has a lower quality product, that lets me down when I really need it, and has no privacy advantage.

Lio··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
I like to buy music. I usually buy from iTunes but I hate that they keep pestering me for rent for their subscription service.

The latest think I've noticed is that iTunes now advertises at one price but actually bills me at a higher price (79p in iTunes, £1 on my credit card).

If Apple behaves like every other manufacturer it will stop being worth the premium.

Lio··on Apple Mac mini review
Which is not that surprising given that BYD received 12.5 billion yuan in Chinese government subsidies in 2025 alone.

If you give any car company that amount of money every year they would be able to undercut the competition and grow their market share too.

When you don't need to make a profit you can afford to dump enough product to kill the competition.

https://eletric-vehicles.com/byd/byd-posts-first-annual-prof...

Lio··on Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac
It's great that you can turn all this off but why is it tucked away in Screen Time of all places?

What's the thinking behind that?

Lio··on Can you tell which images are AI-generated?
Can I tell what’s AI generated?

Well if I can I’m not going to help train more slop image generation.

Bouncing on AI generated button as fast as possible without looking at the images got me 6,000 points.

Lio··on Chess Atlas
For me, it’s either Staunton or St George.

Every thing else is very pretty but feels a bit weird and off.

You can look at it but you wouldn’t want to play with it.

Lio··on Spain orders blocks on Archive.today and its mirrors
This is so funny.

An article about internet censorship of an archive site that requires an archive site to read!

That’s Brilliant! :D

Lio··on Minimal Phone 2
I’ve seen businesses try to push that here. It’s surprising how fast they can suddenly respond to other forms of communication when money is involved.

If you don’t want to live under Zuckerberg’s boot you should fight him every chance you get.

SMS still works.

Lio··on Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep
This is really cool. I like the idea of combining it with a offline Wikipedia cache.
Lio··on Canada welcomes EU proposal to become 'associate member'
As I said it in another post, what does Trump expect? His negotiations are all stick and no carrot.

Canada is bound to look for new trade opportunities in the face of that.

You make a deal with Trump, it's always worse than what you had previously.

Then, no mater what you do, he breaks the deal 3 months later with some kind of implied military threat if you complain.

All the comparisons with personal relationships here are silly. This isn't a marital split. This someone who thinks they're the only customer saying they don't want to buy something and the vendor saying fair enough, I'll sell it to someone else.

Lio··on Carney embraces a proposal for Canada to become the EU's first associate member
Trump won't like it but what does he expect? His negotiations are all stick and no carrot.

Canada is bound to look for new trade opportunities in the face of that.

You do make a deal with Trump, it's always worse than what you had before. Then he breaks even that 3 months later with some kind of implied military threat if you complain.

Trump is just really bad at business.

← PreviousPage 4 of 34Next →